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as punctually as if he had been wound up to say it.

"I 'm positively ashamed of myself," Sir Archie assented ruefully; "but I can't stand it. She gets too much on my nerves. I 'm going to bolt."

"You 'll own that it 's not Miss Tristram's fault if you do."

"I 'll own that I 'm raving mad, if you will; but, to say the least of it, she makes me too uncomfortable. Her eyes are so big," said Sir Archie; "and she never speaks."

"I have heard her speak."

"You don't feel it, then?"

Maverley at once, with even a fierce quickness, lied. "No, I don't."

"I 'm cracked, evidently."

Sir Archie lighted a cigarette. "You don't mind humoring a lunatic and letting me tell you what an ass I am?"

"Talk on, my dear boy; it 's an interesting case."

"You 'll not speak of it, of course."

"Of course not."

"Well, just as an instance of what she does to me, I woke early this morning—at dawn; and when I got up and looked out of my window I saw Miss Tristram below here, in this garden,—I see it from my window,—gathering flowers—white flowers. It was hardly light, you know; nobody was stirring, and there she was. I assure you my hair stood on end."

"You need a tonic," Maverley suggested, with inane common sense, after a slight pause in which he had tried to quell the echoes of Sir Archie's narrative.

"Of course I do."

"What did she do then?"

"Left the garden and disappeared in the woods, carrying the flowers. Own it 's uncanny."

"Perhaps it is—when one needs a tonic. She was probably picking flowers for the house."

"There 's not a white flower in the house," cried Sir Archie. "I looked—on purpose. But it 's not anything she does," he added; "it 's she herself. It 's her eyes and her not speaking. I deserve a kicking for it, but I actually hate that inoffensive girl—actually hate her. I 'm going to bolt."

Dislike, horror, hatred—Maverley pondered the crescendo when Sir Archie left him in the garden. He alone, apparently, felt pity—that wild, heart-wringing pang and thrill of pity. The evening was falling as he walked on into the woods. A footpath led through them. He followed it. It brought him to the highroad. The rectory and its grounds lay not far up the road, and beyond them were the little church and the old churchyard. A sudden thought struck him. He walked on to the church. The evening was cool, serene; it seemed to still the folly in his brain; and something mild and beneficent passed like a breeze over his nightmare mood, as he stood before a grave on which were white flowers. The tall stone at its head was inscribed with the name of Hugh Tristram. Maverley uncovered his head. It was her father's grave. His eyes sought the date on the stone. To-day was the anniversary of his death. So much for Sir Archie. And yet he would have felt that fear had he seen her picking white flowers at dawn.

"Yes, I 'll tell you about her—tell you all I know. It 's a mistake—always, I think, a mistake—to blink things with one's friends."

Mrs. Graham and Maverley were sitting in the little morning-room sacred to her solitude. He had followed her there after breakfast, with a hint that she had understood.

"You see—it 's making me haggard," he confessed, with a bleak laugh.

"Perhaps it would make me—if I were a little less tough; but I have a robust common sense," Mrs. Graham replied. She no longer pretended to hide a mutual knowledge of the something extraordinary in Madeline that was other than her beauty.

"I hoped that perhaps you would be different from other people," she owned, though adding: "You are different in one way: you mind so much more. The children, now, merely find her queer, though Gladys recognizes that other people find her more than that, and resents it for Madeline; with people in general it is only, as a rule, shrinking and dislike. For myself, I am used to her now; I simply don't mind. And I am terribly sorry."

"But what is it?" Maverley almost groaned.

"It is just what you see and feel: that she inspires dislike, and sometimes dread. She is like a ghost."

"Is there any reason for it?"